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Is Tony Blair just the man for the job?

As ministers and officials boarded the Eurostar for Brussels last Thursday, hopes ran high that a Briton could soon occupy the most prominent post in Europe. "Tony Blair is the ideal candidate and he has a lot of support from all quarters," said one civil servant. "It is hard to see how he can be stopped."

Hours later, as a summit of 27 European Union leaders got under way, Gordon Brown entered a meeting of centre-left politicians promising to promote Blair as the first president of Europe.

He was promptly ambushed. Blair, complained one Euro-politician after another, was tainted by the Iraq war and the wrong man to become the face of the EU on the world stage. At one point a flustered Brown protested: "You need to get real."

Worse was to come. Late on Thursday it was clear that Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, had turned against Blair.